Scanning a document to obtain a digital copy of the document is one of the many routine tasks in the modern-day office.
Typically, a flatbed scanner is used to scan the documents. A flatbed scanner usually includes a glass pane, under which there is a bright light for illuminating the pane, and a moving sensor array for performing the scanning. Objects to be scanned are placed face down on the glass pane and an opaque cover is lowered over the object and the glass pane to exclude ambient light. When the scanning process starts, the sensor array moves across the pane, reading the entire area where the object resides. An inconvenience of the flatbed scanner is that the user has to be present to lift and lower the opaque cover for the scanning process. Furthermore, the flatbed scanner usually takes up quite some space.
A portable solution is to carry out the scanning process using hand held document scanners. Hand held document scanners are manual devices that are dragged across the surface of the document or image to be scanned. However, scanning documents in this manner requires a steady hand, as an uneven scanning rate would produce distorted scans.
It is further noted that the usage of flat-bed and hand held scanners are restricted only to scanning objects in two dimensions.
A need therefore exists to provide a device and method for scanning an object on a working surface that addresses at least the above-mentioned problems.